Friday, December 12, 2014

Arizona Pastor Boasts About Tricking Rabbis Into Participating in Anti-Semitic Film

[Cross-posted at Hatewatch.]
Three Phoenix-area rabbis were recently tricked into participating in
the production of an anti-Semitic film by Steven Anderson, the Arizona
pastor who has made headlines with his vitriolic rants about LGBT people
and President Obama.

Anderson and his cohort, Paul Wittenberger, are currently coproducing an anti-Semitic film titled Marching to Zion, described on YouTube as providing “Scriptural evidence that the Jews are no longer God’s chosen people.” It also purports to reveal
that rabbinical Judaism’s Messiah is the Antichrist; among the “topics
covered” are “Blasphemous teachings of the Talmud and Kabbalah,” “Modern
DNA evidence of the Jews’ ancestry,” and “Proof that Christian Zionism
is a modern phenomenon.”

Four Phoenix-area rabbis are interviewed for the film, which has prompted outrage in the Jewish community.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) issued a statement
saying it was “deeply troubled by the upcoming release of a new
‘documentary’ geared toward Christian audiences that purportedly will
focus on ‘the history of the Jews,’ but in fact will likely serve as a
tool for denigrating Jews and Judaism.”

Well, here’s how I got the four rabbis to participate. I
got a list of every rabbi in Arizona, and I think I got 41 rabbis. And I
just figured, you know, if I contact enough rabbis, somebody’s going to
agree to do it. And so I actually contacted all 41 of them, and I told
them I was making a film about Judaism and the history of the nation of
Israel, which is true, and I gave them a whole list of questions and
those questions are the questions that I asked in the interview.

So they knew the questions they were being asked going in. I told
them it was going to be about Judaism and the nation of Israel, but I
didn’t tell them whether it was going to be positive or negative. Well,
they just assume it’s going to be positive, because they assume that I’m
going to be like the rest of evangelicals in Christianity and bow down
to the chosen ones and worship them and say how great they are.

So basically, all four of them are going to hate this movie, of
course, but it’s the truth, they’re false prophets and they deserve to
be exposed and I didn’t lie to them, I mean, everything I told them was
the truth.

According to the Jewish News,
the rabbis who took part did not realize the nature of the production.
Anderson allegedly described himself as “an interested layperson” making
a documentary explaining elements of the Jewish faith.

Rabbi Irwin Wiener, one of the four Jewish interviewees, was
outraged: “The subterfuge that he used to get these interviews from us
is beyond belief.”

According to the report, Anderson had told the interviewees that he
was making the documentary for the Public Broadcasting System. “When he
used the words PBS to me, it sounded legitimate and I didn’t pursue it
any further,” Wiener said.

Another interviewee, Orthodox Rabbi Reuven Mann, was blindsided by
the discovery that he had been tricked, since he felt a responsibility
to explain his faith to anyone interested. “I’m very open about this and
I don’t suspect that anyone has any ulterior motives,” he said.

But Anderson was defensive in his Internet broadcast when his interlocutor about the rabbis—who in fact, was Stephen Lemons—pressed him on whether he had deceived his subjects, notably with the claim to be making a PBS documentary.

“Well, guess what, who is a liar but he that deny that Jesus is the
Christ,” Anderson retorted. “He’s anti-Christ. So basically, if somebody
is lying and saying that Jesus isn’t the messiah, it also does not
surprise me that they would lie and say I was selling the film to PBS.”

Lemons then asked Anderson if he was being deceptive himself. “Ooh,”
he said mockingly, “it’s possible that I could be lying too. It’s also
possible that the Bible could be lying but guess what the Bible’s not
lying and it’s the Jews that are lying.”

Anderson then hung up on Lemons, and continued with his anti-Semitic
rant: “So obviously this is somebody who is calling in trying to defend
the anti-Christ Jews and he’d rather listen to somebody who calls
himself a rabbi and spits on the name of Jesus Christ and calls Jesus a
bastard and his mother a whore, and he thinks I’m lying because I
supposedly claimed I was selling the film to PBS? No I never said any
such thing, and the lying Jewish rabbi that told you that made it up.”

Sara Robinson has worked as an editor or columnist for several national magazines, on beats as varied as sports, travel, and the Olympics; and has contributed to over 80 computer games for EA, Lucasfilm, Disney, and many other companies. A native of California's High Sierra, she spent 20 years in Silicon Valley before moving to Vancouver, BC in 2004. She currently is pursuing an MS in Futures Studies at the University of Houston. You can reach her at srobinson@enginesofmischief.com.